e. In the presence of unscrupulous competition,
resulting in the flinging out of Hertzian wave vibrations
promiscuously, for the purpose of destroying a rival's chances of
obtaining satisfactory connections, it would be necessary to make
rather more complicated arrangements of a nature analogous to those of
the puzzle lock. Instead of one impulse during the minute, two or
three would be required, in order to release the mechanism for ringing
any subscriber's bell; and no ring would take place unless the
time-spaces between these impulses were exactly in accordance with the
agreed form, which might be varied at convenient intervals.

Yet in the cases in which wireless telephony and telegraphy are taken
up by local public authorities having power to forbid any one playing
"dog in the manger," by preventing useful work by others while failing
to promote it himself, the simpler system of wireless telephone call
will be practicable. With the advance of municipalisation, and of
intelligent collectivism generally, enterprises of public utility will
be guarded from mere cut-throat commercial hostility much more
sedulously in the twentieth century than they have been in the past.

A great multitude of new applications of the telegraphic and
telephonic systems will be introduced in the immediate future. Not
only will those subscribers who are connected by wire with central
stations have the advantage of being called at any hour in the morning
according to their intimated wishes, but such services as lighting the
fires in winter mornings, so that rooms may be fairly warmed before
they are entered, will be performed by electric messages sent from a
central station.

Drawings will also be despatched by telegraph. For such purposes as
the transmission of sketches from the scene of any stirring event, the
first really practical application of drawing by telegraph will
probably depend upon the use of a large number of code words divided
into two groups, each of which, on the principles of co-ordinate
geometry, will indicate a different degree of distance from the base
line and from the side line respectively, so that from any sketch a
correct message in code may be made up and the drawing may be
reconstructed at the receiving end. Illustrated newspapers will in
this way obtain drawings exactly at the same time as their other
messages, and distant occurrences will be brought before the public
eye much more vividly and more correctly